Brandt Lane. I haven't had enough time to think since Sunday's post. The voices are quieter, nearly gone. I'm getting less sleep. But somehow that is working out ok, the lack of sleep. I just wait until I think I can sleep and then get an hour or more if I'm lucky. At least I'm not losing sleep because of voices, it's just thoughts really.
My books arrived and I ordered one more. I got Psychotherapy Without the Self by Mark Epstein, and one other of his books. When they arrived I was like, not more books, for a minute. But I set them aside and then it was ok. I've kind of been online and just picking up threads while hearing voices and I haven't over ordered, but I'm going to have enough reading, that's for sure. It's so lucky I can read. Last year I could barely pay attention for a paragraph. I bought this book looking for some other angle on psychoanalysis, as the Freudians drive me mad, they are kind of offensive. But I try to give it time. Anyway I like the title... ok I just opened it and it has a quote from John Cage, "The great Buddhist scholar D.T. Suzuki came to Columbia to teach [in 1951] and I went for two years to his classes. From Suzuki's teaching I began to understand that a sober and quiet mind is one in which the ego does not obstruct the fluency of things that come in through our senses and up through our dreams. Our business in living is to become fluent with the life we are living, and art can help this." Does not obstruct the fluency of things I thought was beautiful. Anyway the internet is looking really beautiful to me these days and I have to kind of pull back. I'm working quite hard on my issues and I don't have much time for anything else. It's kind of a mess, but I'm just trying to find words. In therapy yesterday I was trying to answer the question what have you been doing since I last saw you and I was just at a loss as to where to begin. Trying to explain. I don't really know what I have been doing. I'm just constantly searching really. It's that.
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Brandt Lane. i have only had a few hours of sleep this week, I keep waking up at around 2 in the morning and then I have to sleep in the day. I'm just going with it because it just seems like these things come and go anyway. The more I live with schizophrenia the less I fight it. Voices mainly. I was talking to one of my voices and I was telling him that I scratched my car at the drive thru window at McDonald's because I thought he was trying to take over the wheel. He said, "I'm insured". I totally cracked up. He's like, "send me a bill."
Brandt Lane, June 2016. I finally started painting again yesterday. I did two. The colors I bought are strange to me and it will be good to start blending them I think. I am starting off on a new composition, basically vertical stripes. I like it so far, but I'm kind of attached to what I did before. I'm doing it mostly freehand and I'm quite happy with my ability to kind of get a straight line. I have so lost my feeling for paint because of the meds. It's like having gloves on or something, though I don't. That's why I am painting small and super simple, that and the fact that mentally, I just can't come up with a complicated composition...yet. I'm hoping after some time doing these little paintings that I will feel like trying something bigger and more complex in the future. I don't have to, but it would be fun. This is kind of new, just seeing how my meds unfold. I'm getting ideas more often but I'm just not interested in making a mess. So, more practice. We'll see.
I finished Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, by Shunryu Suzuki. It was hard lol. He is doing something much harder than what I have encountered in Tibetan Buddhism so far - I read books by Pema Chodron and a few by the Dalai Lama. The only thing I have got so far, for Zen physics, from the book is, "...I mean, believing in nothing, believing in something which has no form or color, which is ready to take form or color." I think that is his description of what nothing is. He quotes in the book something to the effect of "teaching which is not forced, is not real teaching". He is forcing it, and it's difficult to get for me. He repeats himself in the book often and it kind of helps things to sink in. He describes a very humble approach to zen, not emphasizing enlightenment or whatever, but stressing a daily sitting practice and a kind of appreciation for every day life as a perfect zen practice. He says that the study of Buddhism is the study of the self, and that everyone is already enlightened, even before they begin to sit. I'm not ready to sit. I tried it in LA many years ago at a zendo and it was so hard for me. I'm going to kind of go against his teaching and just consider the meaning without actually sitting - unless it's to sit and read. In fact, the Dalai Lama has said that it is not advised for the mentally ill to meditate, anyway. I find it hard, but maybe it was because the dharma talk in that session was about demons and so on. It was disturbing to my already bedevilled mind. Anyway, I will leave it a few months and then read this book again. He is heavily contradictory to himself, on purpose of course, and so it's just something I will live with for a while and then go back and see it again. My neighbor came for coffee on Sunday and it was really great. I can't believe it. She gave me a beautiful bag from India with elephants on it. She offered to take me out to dinner sometime. I may actually be getting a social life after millions of years on my own. She was great though, she noticed especially things I had done for the house, having not ever seen it before, ever. My Italian picture frames, my enormous sofa which she loved especially, a bag sewn by a schizophrenic friend in the UK, even the brush strokes on my paintings. She just really noticed everything. On Saturday I am seeing a dear friend from school who lives a couple of hours way. We are meeting in our old university town for lunch. I'm especially glad, as she has been ill this winter - hospitalised twice - and is so far able to still make the day. She's bipolar and is just recently trying Disability, which, like everyone, she avoided for as long as possible. I'm hoping it will be nice for her - she can finish her book she's writing, stuff like that. And I have an invitation to a fireworks party for the Fourth. So I'm really happy with the way life is shaping up. Oh! And my best friend from childhood in Italy is flying in to visit for four days at the end of July. I'm blessed. Can't wait to see her. Ciao! My little color studies, finally hung. Yes I finally did it, I have hung my paintings. Now I have room for more paintings starting tomorrow, new colors and everything. I'm thinking of changing the composition a little though, making them more complex. My painting teacher from university saw them back in April and he recommended that I go as far as to get some colored paper and try different compositions before I paint, all that. But the point of these was to be absolutely formally sane. I just can't paint like I used to, one mark at a time, it is really hard to paint like that mentally. I just don't have the stamina for that anymore, with schizophrenia. I'm pleased - my dear schizophrenic friend in the UK, Vicky, asked me to paint her some paintings. I will. It will be a pleasure. I can see that I improved from the first ones to the last ones. I made more beautiful colors and I added tons of stand oil to the medium (damar varnish) for shine. I'm quite pleased. It's just a simple little project, but the point is I realised it and it did what it was supposed to do, improve my sense of color and give my shaky hands something to work with. Even these are not my normal choice of color, and I have nine completely new colors added to my box to try with the next set. So, am happy.
Having hung my paintings, I called my neighbor on Thursday night and invited her for coffee today. She's coming this afternoon. She had asked to see the paintings, so I arranged it. I'm really excited. This Spring I have spent a bit of money on the house - repairs, fresh paint, I bought italian picture frames for some of my photographs and I bought new bedding and some nice pillows for my very vintage (and broken) sofa in the living room, I had a new chandelier installed in the kitchen (I smashed the old one - I was throwing dishes because of voices) and I had the windows I broke, repaired. I had done, over the years, quite a bit of damage to the house because of hearing voices and I finally got around to fixing the place up again. It's not perfect, but it's better than it was. I didn't have the nerve to ask my Dad to get in a real team. I did it myself. Really, though, the whole house could stand to be done, but I'm trying to just appreciate it for what it is - a free place to stay and a gift from my Dad. So, coffee in the kitchen with a friend. Nice! I have been writing here a bit about my attempts to get my mind in hand by reading about everything from psychoanalysis to Buddhism and Zen. I'm going with the idea that the mind is kind of like the ocean, with waves, as a way of viewing my schizophrenia. I mentioned that I have discovered some surf movies on Youtube toward this, my new "meditation", but I didn't disclose that I actually have a surfboard from many years ago. I'm not going to say I can surf, I can't stand up on the board. Really, I have a much better time with a body board. I'm not gifted with a great sense of balance, which I hate about myself lol. I got a really great chance in California though with the body board, like eight or nine great waves in a row. I don't know how tall the waves were, but I was way up high above the sand, I was a little nervous but it was fantastic. It was at a private beach near Point Dume. Anyway, all that aside, I wanted to say that my favorite surfer to watch is Tom Curren, and I wanted to recommend you watch him if you decide to try the surf films I have mentioned. If you like him and you still have a vhs, I totally with all my heart recommend The Search for Tom Curren. You can find copies on Amazon, I think. Well worth it. I bought my copy in a surf shop twenty years ago, before dvds came out and this film is not available on digital as far as I can tell, and I still absolutely love it. There is a clip from this film on Youtube, but it drives me crazy because I don't recognise it and I have seen this film at least thirty times, ha ha. Mystery. Check it out anyway though. It's all good. Brandt Lane, June 2016. I had an upper endoscopy yesterday, which was a scheduled procedure that had been weighing on my mind more than I thought. The doctors are trying to discover why I am suddenly severely anaemic. The clinic is very good and the test went well. I have some kind of hernia in my stomach or esophagus - can't remember - and a little bleeding, which is the type of thing they were looking for, although I don't know whether it is the answer to the problem. I was given a list of foods to avoid and a prescription for Prilosec lol. I mean, it is just so weird because in my life I have never had heartburn, and the food I eat is not spicy, fried or fatty. I eat lean cuisines and weight watchers frozen pastas every week, like clockwork. It's how I have lost about 40 pounds in the last year. I feel that if I have to take this embarrassing prescription, I should at least get to ride a purple jet ski through a ring of fire with a piece of fried chicken in my hand, like the guy on the Prilosec ad on tv, ha ha. I mean, really. So embarrassing.
The list of forbidden foods the nurse gave me includes caffeinated drinks, carbonated drinks, chocolate and cigarettes. Well, I'm sorry to my doctor but I cannot give any of these up. Every day I have about three large, icy Diet Dr Peppers, and two squares of chocolate as per my diet for losing weight. Also, I fill in with tea or coffee throughout the day. It is simply not possible for me to give these up right now. The only thing I will consider is cutting back on cigarettes, which is clearly called for, hernia or not. But I will only start cutting down, not entirely quitting, just yet. So now that that procedure is behind me, I can think about other things, like finally hanging my paintings on my freshly painted walls. I'm looking forward to this and when it's done, I can paint more. I think I will hang them this afternoon. Then I will do some more housecleaning on Thursday and Friday and Saturday, and have my neighbor over for coffee on Sunday, a goal I have mentioned in previous posts. She has asked to see my paintings. I have only had a guest in the house a couple of times in 14 years, and then just for a cup of coffee in the kitchen, all the while hoping they wouldn't ask about the damage I had done to the walls, which I just only last week have painted. It's hard having guests, because my brother - my housemate - is also schizophrenic and has refused his meds. He is highly paranoid about having anyone in the house and is very disruptive of even my phone calls. So I have to kind of cross my fingers that any visit will go smoothly. Still, I will make this happen somehow. I'm excited. I even have new coffee cups and on Friday, I will buy some Milano cookies too for her. Should be nice. I am still working on my mind, my idea of my mind. I read that the quality of the mind is like water, and that as such, it will naturally have waves. This is interesting to me and quite calming - I don't have to believe that I'm being spoken to by other, unseen "people" or devils with my voices, when they happen. I can just think of them as waves. On that theme, I have been watching surf movies on youtube. They are super entertaining and give a good feeling generally. I'm trying to get some kind of inspiration for dealing with the waves of my mind by watching them. Maybe it's a bit romantic of me, but I'll try it anyway. In a way, with eleven hospitalisations, it's what I have been doing all along. Brandt Lane 2016. The voices have settled down now to an occasional whisper throughout the day, which I can stand. It's a kind of therapy my brain has invented. This voice is that of a former friend and he is nice to me. He even said he would buy me lunch next time I'm in New York, lol. It's nice, very nice, but I have to keep reminding myself of reality. After so many years of horrible, hypercritical, mean voices, it's lovely to have this tamer mind. I really kind of appreciate it. It's hard to believe that my mind is so inventive, like every morning this voice will give me a color to think of for the day, it's a little game. It's nice and I never expect it, it just happens. I kind of love this voice and I don't know what will happen when he's gone too, like the others.
I'm reading a perfectly horrible book on psychoanalysis, recommended by my friend Sophie. It's called Why Do Women Write More Letters Than They Post. The book so far - I'm more than halfway through it - is almost entirely about men, and, though I have learned a couple of things I didn't know, what I have mostly noticed is that psychoanalysts know almost nothing about women at all. Much is made of female sexuality in this book, but mostly it's about women denying themselves this aspect of life. I can't understand why these analysts don't actually deal with the fact of childbirth in women's lives because it completely dominates the female mental landscape for so many years. The subject is untouched in this book so far, bar a brief, unexplored mention of a case of a woman who desperately tried to convince her married daughter not to become a mother. Instead, there is much made of penis envy and the electra complex, in which a girl is thought to be in love with her father. I'm going to finish this wretched book, but it does deliver my worst fears about having psychoanalysis, which seems to say that you are fucked up beyond all repair. It quotes Seneca, who said you will be "led by fate, or fate will drag you". Thanks tons. Not. I mean, I am a bit skewered by this book, which I am reading to try and understand why I left my husband nearly twenty years ago, because of meeting a very powerful other man, a hopeless event, but inspiring nonetheless. I still don't know why I would leave everything I had ever wanted for complete solitude, which is what I did. I just wonder. I mean I usually blame schizophrenia for my divorce, but I should confess that this other man did remind me of my father. God. You know? Meanwhile, I have two other books I am reading, a photography-for-dummies book, which I and my friendly voice are enjoying together - he explains things I don't understand to me. Weird! And I am reading my Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind book too, which I quite enjoy and find a bit challenging. On balance, though, I get much more real instruction and pleasure from the dharma talks by Pema Chodron, the Buddhist nun. She is just so wonderfully experienced at Western life and culture. She really knows how to speak so that you can incorporate what she's saying into your life and relate to it. I have really weathered a lot of storms in my mind and in life because of having read her books. I recommend them especially to anyone, really, but certainly a schizophrenic. Start with The Wisdom of No Escape, then try When Things Fall Apart or Start Where You Are. Total genius, so warm and well written and full of love. I haven't started painting my paintings again yet, but I did do an incredible thing. I actually went and got the paint for the walls I damaged in the house, because of hearing voices, and painted them. I can't believe I actually did it. This has been weighing on my to-do list for like, nearly a decade. It's wonderful to have it done and I now have nice clean walls to hang my completed paintings on. It's so weird and nice to see my idea start appearing as a reality all around the house. It was easy and fun and I can't believe it's finally done. Next weekend I will invite my neighbor for coffee, probably Sunday afternoon. She has asked to see my paintings and I will hopefully have them hung by then. I have laid them all out on the floor of the garage/studio. They're fine, just exactly what I had in mind, and I can see that I really improved from the first one to the last of 30. I'm pleased with my colors and I can't even remember how I got them, but I have nine new colors waiting for me and so I will do at least twenty more of these paintings before the end of the year. After that, I might actually attempt something larger, a "real" painting, as opposed to a small color study, which is what these are. Brandt Lane, June 2016. I cannot believe it is already well into June. l have had voices all winter and spring, and have been thrown off my feeling for the passage of time. In some ways it feels life is long, in others, short, especially as I am turning 52 in three months, which is properly "in your Fifties". I visited Brandt Lane yesterday on my way to the therapist's, which is a tiny street downtown not far from my therapist's office. It's a private garden that is open to the public. I like to visit it. I found it by accident, just slowly sightseeing in that part of town, it's where old houses and great gardens are.
It's just five years ago that, at age 47, I began coming out of my zombie state while on Haldol. On my birthday that year, I had my first dental appointment in more than 15 years. I was proud of myself for making this appointment. It meant I cared again. Since then, I have been awarded Disability and so I see a dentist twice a year, an internist four times a year, a psychiatrist four times a year, and a therapist twice a month, if not more. I feel wonderful, getting such great care, I'm wildly thankful. I look forward to my appointments and I have improved generally, thanks also in part to my friend Mark, who lives out of town. His mother lives in my neighborhood and he comes to visit her and takes me out for coffee and icecream and whatever else there is to do, including indoor skydiving, bowling, the batting cage or miniature golf. It is because of him that I have been able to start showering and even brushing my hair and putting on lipstick. Before that, I hadn't seen anyone for about fifteen years other than family. My car had broken down and was in the shop, so I had to walk to the store for cigarettes. On the way back, I saw someone running with an enormous, beautiful, German Shepherd. It turned out to be Mark. We hadn't seen each other since graduation in 1982 - we went to high school together. So if we hadn't run into each other that day, I would probably still be in rags. My shirt sleeve was ripped at the elbow, I hadn't showered in weeks and I weighed a lot more then. One of the first things he said was that having a job would "probably help me". It is a normal thought, but I remember, because of that, he was the first person I told about my schizophrenia. He was very sweet and googled it. He's still encouraging me to go back to work, which is something I just have to brush off. I mean, it's thanks, but I have thought of that myself actually lol. This winter, up to today, I have only had about three weeks in total without voices and hallucinations. I couldn't even hold a phone conversation or a Facebook chat, and my sleep and eating schedule was off. If I had a job, I would have had to have like nearly six months off sick leave lol. I mean, I don't quite know what people think us schizophrenics do all day, but thinking about basic self care with a view to getting a job is pretty much what we do. So don't worry, we're on it. I mean, you know? My zen book I mentioned in previous posts has arrived and I have started reading it. It is quite conceptually difficult for me to get and I'm doing a bit of additional research as I go along. It's the concept of non-duality which I find difficult to accommodate, because of my schizophrenia. I have "demons" to reckon with and so I have trouble letting go of the idea that there is a force for good and a force for "evil". Before schizophrenia set in, I just dismissed all talk of the devil and felt as if I were blessed in life generally. Everything was going my way it seemed. In fact, I thought of my life as heaven on earth. But my first and subsequent psychoses were so incredibly scary and negative, that I tend to think there is that which is ... at least, negative, in the world too. The author is presenting the idea that everything you experience is your own mind, which I almost grasp sometimes for a few seconds. It's interesting to consider, especially with mental illness, and it's easier and more hopeful than thinking you are hounded by the devil, which is what I thought for many years. I'm hoping that by accepting my experience as my own mind, I will come to know it and it will calm down. It's a thought anyway. I mean schizophrenia is capricious and ridiculous and distracting and I have in mind trying to kind of parent my own mind, so that the rogue elements are tamed. We'll see. He says we are "swinging doors" that move when we inhale and exhale. I can only start with that. I want to share a poem that my friend, James Crary, wrote, reprinted by permission of the author. Poetry for me is often challenging, I am hypersensitive to stylistic word craft so it's not all poetry I enjoy. I'm a bit of a philistine like that... Hope you like it too. Incandescence For Mandy There is so much of nothing. Everywhere. It shimmers through the hair on my arms, Softly brushes my cheek, radiant. It began as a dent, fracture Coming between us, loud, trucks, airplanes Bolts of lightning in a mad sky The careening of comets in outer space, Blasting volumes of supernovas. I heard you cry out, But all of eternity was sucked in And there was nothing we could do. We lost each other. There was nothing left. Everywhere. It watered every plant, gave light to see by Made the children happy, the plants grow There was nothing left of us But pure love. Everything else had come between us. Lamp, daylight. I have been trying to read a book about photography this week. It's slow going, and I often have to read a sentence two or three times, but I'm getting it. This effort is a long time coming. I bought the book last year, for a start. But more than that, I have wanted to be a photographer since I was 8 years old and though I have even made a living with photography, I can't say I know exactly what I'm doing. So I'm finally getting there. They say it's never too late, but for this I say it's about bloody time. Hopefully I will actually come to understand my camera this summer. I have a portrait idea I would like to try and I want to know what I'm doing. I'm nervous. I haven't ever tried to take pictures of people I don't know - the public. But our corner gas station has a store and the people are all so interesting, I thought I would start trying to document the place and the people. Wish me luck.
I'm still struggling with voices, but they died down a lot starting yesterday. One of the voices/visions is of a photographer friend I know, and he is even able to explain things in words and terms I can't come up with myself. It's really nice and makes me wonder about the abilities of the brain to formulate new people with ideas and a language and vocabulary all their own, a relevant language, a real one, with accurate meaning. Far more expressive than I am in every way. I mean, I do allow that it is all entirely my brain, but I can't understand why my brain has invented new characters with knowledge I really need. I don't know what to do other than mention it to my therapist. As this photographer friend is mostly friendly and nice to me, I find myself missing him now that he's quieter. All this I need to get some perspective on. I don't want it to get out of hand, become a full fledged delusion. I'm a little nervous about it. I don't even quite know what to google to find out more. But I googled regaining conscious mind after a nervous breakdown and found a little information, not much. I believe I have had a small breakdown this winter/spring, and that is why since January I have had only about two and half weeks voices-free. I'll keep pursuing it, I mean, it's distracting and debilitating these episodes and I want to walk free. With this voice character I mentioned, I have been looking back decades to try and figure out why my brain chose him. I'm still not sure. And because of all this reflection and hallucinatory conversation I have been sleeping a lot during the day because of missing sleep at night and I have smoked too much and I'm generally just a little depressed. I kind of love this character I'm talking to, but I have to take back my mind. It's difficult and I'm nervous. My schizophrenia has mutated over the years from highly super critical and punishing to more civilised and even friendly and lovely. I like to think this is because I have been patient and have had the time and the privacy to talk my voices down, reason with them, defend myself and be heard. I don't know. I mean, I could use a real analyst, but I can't find one where I live. Of course, it would have to be such a huge level of trust that relationship anyway. I mean, I won't entertain that I have penis envy or something like this. I'm perfectly happy being a girl lol. But it would be interesting to know why my brain has adopted this character to share my knowledge with, instead of just giving me what I want as and to myself alone. I would like to know. Sun in Clouds, Spring 2016. I was smoking a cigarette in the garage this morning, sitting on my Grandmother's sofa, talking to my Mom on the telephone, when my Dad appeared at the door as expected every morning. He had a letter in his hand. I got up to get it and I could not believe it. It was a letter from my former Father in Law. It was small and handwritten, and I just looked at it as if it had come from outer space, or certainly a stranger. It has just been such a long, long time. It was so lovely to receive this letter. I wrote him a few weeks ago, and had written occasionally over the years since the divorce, just because I loved my former husband's family so much and I wanted to let him know that I still loved him so much and had so many lovely memories. It was a brief note on a scrap of paper saying that he was glad I was feeling better and he included 45 pounds sterling. It was just really really touching and entirely unexpected and has given me a feeling of such delicate happiness. I never thought I would hear from him again and I had guessed he wasn't even opening my letters. So this is a quiet lovely moment. I'm just kind of finally at a loss for words with them, my ex's father, and I feel I can finally rest my pen. He understands. I even had tears in my eyes and I haven't cried in nearly 20 years.
I haven't painted again yet. I have been working really hard with my voices, hours, days and more than a week just talking, explaining, reasoning. I find it very hard to be forced to put into words, into thin air, what I'm really thinking and feeling. It's as if I am talking to someone who should already know, since there is no one there to hear me. It's extremely hard work. I have a top line on my marriage, and that is, it was blissful and happy and worth every second of my time. But these talks were more comprehensive. My voice said I had been codependent, which is a well known term and over the years I had googled but I didn't find a definition that resonated with me until yesterday. Sure, I was codependent. But I was codependent with myself. I wasn't bringing out my best qualities because I was insecure and nervous. Also ambitious. It was also that we didn't talk about important issues, money - we had plenty, but he earned like 8 times what I earned and I didn't know that, so I could not ever figure out if we could afford children and when. Which is another thing we could have easily discussed. I think we were just so in love and kind of in some kind of suspended disbelief of our own happiness at having found each other, and that discussing ordinary, practical things was not part of that overriding charm and enchantment. We simply skipped over it, and so speaking for myself, I didn't even know I should bring these things up. They were just things I perpetually wondered about while being otherwise blissfully happy. He's a lovely human being and I am truly thankful. But yeah, we should have talked. I think sometimes about what might have happened if things had been different and I remember a couple of moments when all would have been forgiven and we could have gone on, the rift would have just quietly closed. But I made other choices in those moments, choices I can't really explain or even understand myself. I kind of ruined my own life with these decisions and I did it purposefully. I think I'll never know exactly why, but I have a kind of peace now that I have never known before and a kind of happiness, but it's an entirely different color and texture to the happiness I had when I was married, which was kind of amplified and certainly vibrant, but kind of also a low-level anxiety. Like, I wondered how long we could keep the ball in the air. Now the ball rolls across the lawn to my feet every morning as I sit on the steps in the morning. It's nice. But sure, I remember his smile, I remember perfect sleep with no dreams, I remember the warmth of his hand as it took mine when we fell asleep every night. And I smile. |
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